In one of the most recent interviews, the co-founder of NEO project rebranded from the original cryptocurrency project “AntShares,” Erik Zhang spoke about the well-known “Ethereum Killer” or “Chinese Ethereum,” openly expressing his disapproval of the nickname that NEO got in and outside the community that favors this cryptocurrency focused on Dapp development.

While it is only natural to compare NEO with other smart contract projects like EOS (EOS) and Ethereum (ETH), Zhang stated that Ethereum and NEO has different initiatives although compared in wide circles of crypto enthusiasts.

Zhang also spoke about NEO adoption and its performance in the market, describing NEO as a “global project”.

NEO is Not “Chinese Ethereum,” but a “Global Project,” says NEO Co-founder

After openly expressing his dissatisfaction with the nickname “Chinese Ethereum,” the co-founder of NEO project stated that NEO, although created by two people from China, should be viewed as a global project, also stating that NEO was not launched with the idea of competing against Ethereum.

However, on the matter of the nickname “Chinese Ethereum,” Zhang went on to say that a token that could potentially overtake Ethereum “can’t be another Ethereum,” in a way indicating that one of the main objectives of NEO would be to overtake the market of decentralized applications.

When talking about how NEO should be viewed as a global project, Zhang went on to say that the project itself has contributions from developers and contributors around the world, concluding that NEO is being developing beyond the borders of China.

Perhaps what would be a painful topic for the majority of NEO investors that lost a great portion of their investment in 2018, while NEO is still dropping with bear trends, the co-founder of NEO doesn’t seem to be bothered with.

According to NEO co-founder, the price of a digital asset in the market is not a yardstick that could be used to measure how successful a certain project is, referring that the true value lies in the technological development of cryptocurrency projects.

NEO and Ethereum Are Working on the Same Protocols, Zhang Reminds

When asked how NEO and Ethereum are different given the fact that NEO appeared with the idea of using smart contract operations after Ethereum platform presented the concept to the cryptoverse, Zhang reminded that the two projects are running on different protocols.

While Ethereum is working on Proof of Work, waiting to complete the announced transition to Proof of Stake, NEO uses Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance protocol (dBFT), making the two projects technologically different in their cores.

Another difference is that Ethereum and Neo both use different programming languages for smart contracts.

Ethereum uses Solidity, which represents a domain-specific language, and NEO uses programming languages for general purposes, such as Java, JavaScript and Python, also emphasizing that the interface both projects are using are completely different one from another.

Smart contracts interface on Ethereum is distributed through Ethereum Virtual Machine. On the other hand, Zhang describes NEO interface as close to virtual devices, adding that NEO platform offers a great number of smart contract APIs.